Screen doors for residential garage door openers have found a good deal of success in the last several decades because they permit the garage area to be used as an entertainment or work area without the nuisance of insects or foreign materials blowing in the breeze.
In order to explain the prior art and the present convertible closure, it is helpful at this early point of the description to provide a nomenclature for the spatial relation in overhead door technology. This nomenclature is generally derived from the viewpoint of the garage door installer, who generally is standing inside the garage facing the outside. Some installers may accept these definitions of directions and some may not, but they will hopefully be consistent in terms of the present description.
The direction toward the outside of the door opening is defined as the forward direction, and the direction from the opening toward the inside of the garage is defined as the rear direction. The direction, again when facing the opening from the inside of the garage, to the left of the left track and left header plate mechanism is referred to herein as outside, and the area to the right of the left track is referred to as the inner or inside, as defined herein, and the opposite is true with respect to the right track and right header assembly.
Furthermore, the garage door openings are usually, but not always, defined by a pair of spaced vertical jams, each commonly including several 2.times.6's bound together, and a horizontal header, usually a 2.times.6, positioned in a vertical plane across the top of the jams. The inside of the jams usually have a vertical strip of trim material, referred to as a stop, that seals against the forward surface of the panel door.
HPD International Inc. of Brookfield, Wis., manufactures a line of "Pest-Aside" screen doors. One of these mounts to the front surface(outside wall) of the garage door opening, which denigrates the architecture of the structure and also subjects it to deterioration due to exposure to the weather. The HPD company also manufactures an offset rolling screen door mounted at the rear of the door opening on tracks and a rolling mechanism mounted rearwardly from the overhead door track. Because of the substantial displacement of the roller mechanism and track assemblies from the jams, it is extremely difficult to seal this Pest-Aside door mechanism, and it occupies a significant amount of space within the building enclosure.
The Screen America Corporation manufactures a line of "Skeet'r Beat'r" rolling screen assemblies for residential garage doors. Several of these are forward mounting assemblies that mount to the outside wall of the garage, but S.A.C. does manufacture a third model with the screen roll assembly mounted beneath and forwardly of the header between the door opening jams. The track is mounted inside the door stops. This design again has the disadvantage that it takes up significant additional space within the door opening, and in fact reduces the vertical door clearance significantly and is, of course, subjected to outside elements because it is mounted forwardly of the panel door. In a fourth embodiment, the screen roller assembly is mounted in the position of the header, which requires that the header be removed, and the track again is mounted inside the stops, which subject the tracks to the outside elements.
The Dodge, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 778,228; the Forsyth, U.S. Pat. No. 839,282; the Drake, U.S. Pat. No. 2,015,993; the Wood, U.S. Pat. No. 1,015,413; the Claus, U.S. Pat. No. 1,958,695; the Doscher, U.S. Pat. No. 1,960,434; the Munson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,050,742; the Keegan, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,371,702, and the Lange, U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,797, all show various screening devices, some roll-ups--in connection with screening doors, and windows, but none in relation to overhead doors.